Yahweh and the God of Christian Theology
Published in On the Way to the Postmodern: Old Testament Essays 1967-1998, Volume 2 (JSOTSup, 292; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), pp. 498-507
Old Testament theologians often Þnd themselves in a defensive or apologetic position when speaking of the God of the Old Testament. Is its image of God not naïve, and unsophisticated, even crude and degrading?
No doubt, the God of the Old Testament can be a somewhat uncomfortable deity, but I would rather go on to the offensive, and argue that it is precisely where Christian theology believes it has progressed beyond Yahweh that it has obscured the reality of the biblical God. This is, therefore, a good-natured polemic against some aspects of the God of Christian theology in favour of the confessional assertion by which Israel lived: Yahweh, he is the God!
1. The Name of God
Somewhere between the Þfth and the second centuries bce a tragic accident befell God: he lost his name. More exactly, Jews gave up using God's personal name Yahweh, and began to refer to Yahweh by various periphrases: God, the Lord, the Name, the Holy One, the Presence, even the Place. Even where Yahweh was written in the biblical text, readers pronounced the name as Adonai. With the Þnal fall of the temple, even the rare liturgical occasions when the name was used ceased, and even the knowledge of the pronunciation of the name was forgotten.
Did the abandonment of the name Yahweh have any signiÞcance? G.F. Moore rightly argued that it did not affect the essential characteristics of the Jewish religion, which at all time recognized God as personal. Yet the name by which the deity is known is bound to inþuence to some degree the impression worshippers have of their God. The French Protestant, in whose Bible the divine name is consistently rendered as 'l'Eternel', must develop a rather different image of God from that of the English reader familiar with 'the Lord'. Any epithet by which God is habitually known draws attention to one particular aspect of the divine character.
A personal name is different. A personal name does not have any meaning in itself, and even if its etymology is patent, nothing can be known about the person from the name itself. The character of Frank or Felicity cannot be discerned from the name, but is entirely to be inferred from what those persons are and do. A personal name is thus at the same time a marker of personal identity and a concealment of the true reality of the person. It presents us with an individual, but does not 'give away' that person
It is the same with the personal name Yahweh. Indeed, it sounds as though it may have some connection with the verb håyâ, 'to be', and could perhaps be the causative of that verb, meaning 'he brings into being, creates'. Yet Israel itself did not recognize such a signiÞcance; there are, for example, no word-plays on such a meaning of the name. Bernhard Anderson correctly observed: 'The important feature of the name is not its linguistic value, but its historical associations. Whatever it meant once, it acquired concrete content through the historical experiences of Israel.'
But is that then not the case also with the word 'God' now? Does not the capitalization of 'God' turn it into a personal name? Not really. 'God' can be a dictionary entry, but 'Yahweh' must be an encyclopaedia entry. 'God' can be deÞned, more or less, as 'the highest being', 'that than which nothing greater can be conceived', and so on. 'Yahweh', on the other hand, does not mean anything to us but what Yahweh is and does in the Old Testament. The name is nothing more than a referent to the person. While 'God' with its capitalization respectfully acknowledges that there is only one true 'god', it does not name him with his proper name, Yahweh.
The personal name of God is Yahweh. It is a foreign name, quite un-English, and so unlike the good Anglo-Saxon word 'God'. For that reason, if perhaps for no other, the name Yahweh must be preserved-lest it should ever be imagined that God is an Englishman. He is a foreigner now to every race on earth. The very awkwardness of addressing a God whose name is not native to one's language in itself alerts us to the alienness of Yahweh to every god created in our own image.
What use is to be made of the name Yahweh, then? I do not suggest that God should be known by no other term than his personal name; the Old Testament itself is rich in titles and epithets for Yahweh, all of which have their value. At least in our translations of the Bible it should be made plain (as the Jerusalem Bible does) when the personal name of God is being used, rather than having it hidden by such an epithet as 'the Lord'. And the introduction of God's personal name into Christian worship and theology could have surprising and creative results.
But does not the absence of 'Yahweh' from the New Testament suggest that in Christianity the name has been superseded? That would be so only if the New Testament as a whole may be said to have superseded the Old Testament, rendering it passé, obsolete and superþuous. Such a claim must be resisted, and with it any argument that the New Testament's usage of the divine names is regulative for Christianity. In fact, it would have been strange if the New Testament had persisted in the use of 'Yahweh' when in contemporary Judaism the common use of that name was regarded as blasphemous. Now that we live in an environment when Jews themselves would, in the main, not be offended by the Christian use of the name, the situation is altogether different.
My point is this: in popular Christian theology the personhood of God is less prominent that it ought to be because God is not referred to by his personal name. The Old Testament's reiterated use of the personal name Yahweh is some safeguard against the transformation of God into a philosophical abstraction.
2. Anthropomorphism
One striking feature of Old Testament speech about Yahweh is the frequent use made of anthropomorphic language. To him are attributed bodily parts, human-like actions, and even human emotions: he rejoices, loves, hates, feels jealousy and anger, and experiences change of heart (repentance).
Such anthropomorphisms have long been an embarrassment to Jews and Christians alike. Already in the second century bce the Septuagint translators removed many of the anthropomorphisms of the Hebrew Bible. Philo too was affronted by them, writing in his On the Unchangeableness of God that, although the Bible says both that 'God is not like a man' (Num. 23.19) and-by its anthropomorphisms-that he is like a man, 'the former statement is warranted by Þrmest truth, but the latter is introduced for the instruction of the many (hoi polloi)', those 'whose natural wit is dense or dull, whose childhood training has been mismanaged, and are incapable of seeing clearly'. To suppose, for example, that God really had second thoughts about the creation of humanity (Gen. 6.6) would be blasphemy: 'what great impiety could there be than to suppose that the unchangeable changes?'
While Christianity has produced some extremists who have believed, like the Audiani, that the biblical anthropomorphisms were to be taken literally and that God must therefore have a body, the bulk of Christian thinkers have tended in the opposite direction.
One method of explaining away anthropomorphisms has been to say that they belong to a primitive stage of revelation and are replaced later by more 'spiritual' and 'reÞned conceptions of God. A second method is to regard them as mere metaphors. Both these methods are employed in the short entry in the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church under 'Anthropomorphism': 'Scripture, especially in the earlier books of the OT . . . in order to be intelligible to less developed minds, frequently uses anthropomorphic language, which is in most cases clearly metaphorical'. But the objections to both these methods are overwhelming.
To the Þrst method we can object that anthropomorphic language is not conÞned to, or even most concentrated in, the earliest parts of the Bible; it is in the prophets that we Þnd some of the most striking anthropomorphisms, Yahweh being depicted as a women screaming in childbirth (Isa. 42.14) or as a warrior red with the blood of his slain enemies (Isa. 63.1-2). Nor is anthropomorphism left behind when we reach the New Testament: 'God loved the world', 'God sent his Son', are equally anthropomorphic; it is just that the antrhopomorphism is not so vivid.
To the second method the objection is that while anthropomorphisms referring to the 'bodily parts' (such as hand or eye) of God can be understood as metaphors for his activity, for what is the speech or love of God a metaphor?
Anthropomorphic language is not some element in the biblical texts for which excuses have to be made, or a network of metaphors that must be reduced to plain language, but part of the biblical apprehension of God. It is to be evaluated, not negatively as accommodation to human language or divine condescension to human understanding, but positively, as a vital element of our knowledge of God.
A positive evaluation of anthropomorphism demands re-examination of some deeply ingrained elements in our notion of God. There is, for example, the matter of the inÞniteness of God. In an article in Theology a few years ago, Donald Mackinnon wanted to afÞrm yet again God's 'total freedom from limitation'. Anthropomorphic language, on the other hand, wants to speak of a God who expresses himself precisely through his self-limitations. When poets determine to express themselves in sonnet form or composers in sonata form, they take upon themselves a host of limitations that do not diminish but only make possible their artistic self-expression. Yahweh's self-expression in anthropomorphic form can be regarded as having the same character, quite differently from a mode of thought that argues that to predicate anything of God is thereby to limit him. Always in metaphysical theology, as Mackinnon says, agnosticism has been judged less perilous than anthropomorphism, but my contention is precisely the opposite. It is better, my argument would run, if crudely stated, to have a God who is imagined as an old man with a long white beard sitting on a cloud than to end up with a God about whom nothing can truly be known or said.
To take a further example: it is characteristic of Christian theology, academic and popular, to afÞrm the timelessness of God. 'For him', says Mackinnon, 'the distinction between past, present and future has no signiÞcance of any sort whatever'. Though a handful of biblical texts may point in that direction ('A thousand years with the Lord are as one day', 2 Pet. 3.8), we may ask more seriously whether it can truly be said of Yahweh, involved as he is in the moto perpetuo of Israel's history, that he is beyond time. The Yahweh of the Old Testament is not a static, timeless being: he is in constant interaction with his people and with world events; he has a history, a biography, a futurity, a past. His eternity is inÞnite duration, not a quality of existence; his changelessness so-called is simply his faithfulness to his promises, for he does change in response to the conversion of the Ninevites or the repentances of Israel. He is acted upon and reacts. He promises, threatens, reminds Israel of the past. He is the Þrst and will be the last. He will be whatever he will be. Of whom could it be said with less truth that 'the distinction between past, present and future has no signiÞcance whatever'?
Anthropomorphic language about God, rightly appreciated, is no distortion, but a perception of his reality that challenges many of the categories of traditional Christian theology.
For many Christians God is essentially loving, supportive, safe. Yet, if Yahweh is God, the Old Testament makes sure that such a simple picture of the personality of God is called in question. In the Old Testament neither the loving nor the abrasive aspect of Yahweh's personality is so underplayed that the one is swallowed up in the other. It is the experience of Israel that Yahweh is a multi-faceted personality, complex and not entirely predictable.
Yahweh is experienced by Jeremiah, for instance, as both supportive and oppressive. While he is digniÞed as a transmitter of the word of Yahweh, he also knows that word as a Þre in his bones. He knows himself to be Yahweh's prophet, but equally he knows that it is only by dint of greater strength that Yahweh has forced him into that role: 'Yahweh, you have persuaded me [to be a prophet] and I was persuaded. You are stronger than I, and you have prevailed' (20.7). Yet that oppressive strength that dominates him is at the same time the source of his conÞdence in the face of persecution (20.11).
To the psalmist of Psalms 4243, Yahweh is known under the Þgure of water. At one time it is life-giving water, which the soul desperately thirsts for: 'As a hart longs for þowing streams, so long I for you, O God' (42.2). But at another time God is experienced as destructive water: 'Deep calls to deep at the thunder of your cataracts; all your waves and your billows have overwhelmed me' (42.7). Or for the servant of Yahweh in Isaiah 53, Yahweh is known not only as the one who elevates him to a position of pre-eminence so that he is 'exalted and extolled and very high' (52.13), but also as the one responsible for his humiliation and suffering: 'It was the purpose of Yahweh to bruise him; he has put him to grief' (53.10)
These have been some illustrations of aspects of Yahweh's personality that could be called loving and abrasive. There are many other ways in which his personality could be described: he is forever creative, dynamic; he is tender and terrible, patient and impetuous, self-determining but open to scorn, rejection and contempt, withdrawn and engaged, fresh with initiatives but taken aback by human perversity. He can be laughed at by a Sarah, blasphemed by a Job, abused petulantly by a Jonah, and yet not Þnd it necessary to bluster or use force majeure. He is domineering and þexible; but above all he is passionate. Nothing could be further from the truth about Yahweh than Clement of Alexandria's afÞrmation that God is impassible, without anger and without desire.
A Christian theology-perhaps any theology-does not care for these fragmented glimpses of the divine reality. Nothing must be discrepant, no act of God may sound wilful, everything must be shown to be purposive. All of the abrasive aspects of the divine personality must in the end be subsumed under the rubric 'love'. But the more that note is insisted upon, the more the reality of such negative encounters with God that the Old Testament witnesses to is set aside. And the more it is insisted that God is ever-loving, ever-patient, ever 'positive' in his relationships with humans, the more religion becomes a cradle or a cocoon, and the less true it is to the reality of human experience of God.
By all means let it be afÞrmed that 'judgments are his strange work, but mercy is his darling attribute', but let it be afÞrmed that both alike are his work. The Old Testament does not present us with a God whose personality is essentially simple, and whose every action may be readily integrated with the basic tenor of his personality, but with one whose judgments are unsearchable and his ways ultimately inscrutable.
3. Christomonism
One result of the absence of Yahweh from Christian consciousness has been the tendency to focus on the person of Christ as the exclusive manifestation of deity. Jesus has become, both in many circles of Christian piety, and in some academic theology, virtually the whole horizon of the divine. G. E. Wright devoted a chapter of his book The Old Testament and Theology to this interesting deviation from biblical and confessional theology. Taking as his Þrst set of examples the chorales and arias of Bach's St Matthew Passion, Wright commented: 'Jesus is here the sole and sufÞcient object of piety and devotion. Other dimensions of divine reality play no part. Jesus is divine reality-and the theology can be called a devotional unitarianism.'
A second sphere where the same Christomonistic piety can be observed is that of a certain type of pietistic and devotional hymnology of the last hundred years, still the staple diet of very much 'informal' religion. In hymns like 'Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine', and 'What a friend we have in Jesus', or in 'choruses' like 'Jesus loves me, this I know', we Þnd in practice what would be hotly denied in theory, a unitarianism of the second person of the Trinity.
For a third illustration we may take an academic example, that of the later Barth. Here the principle of Christocentricity becomes so developed to dominate the theologian's whole perspective. So, 'Everything which comes from God takes place "in Jesus Christ", i.e. in the establishment of the Covenant which, in the union of his son with Jesus of Nazareth, God has instituted and maintains and directs'. For Barth, the doctrine of humanity is really an aspect of Christology.
It can be embarrassing to protest against excessive Christocentricity, because Christian piety naturally demands ascription of the highest possible signiÞcance to Jesus. And although traditional confessional theology has had no hesitation in recognizing that Christ is not the totality of what is meant by God, what has tended to happen in practice is that trinitarian theology has given a central place to the person and work of Christ. The roles of Father and Spirit, whether in theology or in liturgy, have regularly been subordinated to that of the Son.
What 'Yahwistic' theology offers, by way of contrast, is a belief in God that is non-trinitarian, or a least pre-trinitarian. May the unity of God (frequently afÞrmed by Old Testament and New Testament alike) be a matter not only of the oneness of God as contrasted with polytheism, but also of his oneness as contrasted with his 'three-ness'? Even in Christian theology God, as well as being Father, Son, and Spirit, ought also to be recognized as Yahweh, neither Farther, Son, nor Spirit.
4. The Real versus the Available God
Throughout this discussion, the question that has been lurking in the background is whether the Old Testament's picture of Yahweh is an authentic picture of the true God or whether it needs correction from some other source.
But is it not asking too much to demand a picture of the 'true God'? For, we may argue, we do not have access to the 'true God', to God as he is in himself, but only to some mental construct of him, whether that construct be identiÞed with what God has 'revealed' of himself, or whether it is an amalgam of reason, experience, and tradition. The distinction of Gordon D. Kaufman between the 'real' and the 'available' God is of value here. He uses the analogy of an historical personage, of whom what was 'real' is by no means what is 'available'. 'The real referent for "God" ', Kaufman writes, 'is never accessible to us . . . It is the "available God" we have in mind when we worship or pray.' The concept of the 'real' God only serves to relativize our claims to theological knowledge.
Then what is the relation between the 'real' God and the 'available' God? Tillich's aphorism may point the way to an answer: 'God is a symbol for God'. The symbol, unlike the mere sign, 'participates in the reality of that for which it stands', so that the available God, of whom we may speak, is symbolic for the real God. Tillich himself stressed that 'Anthropomorphic symbols are adequate for speaking of God religiously . . . Nothing is more inadequate and disgusting than the attempt to translate the concrete symbols of the Bible into less concrete and less powerful symbols.'
In a word, if Yahweh is not himself the 'real' God, the God beyond God, the ineffable God, the God as unknown or unknowable, or God insofar as he is unknown or unknowable, he is the nearest we can ever get to that God. He is, if one prefers to put it this way, what God has chosen to reveal of himself. It is the anthropomorphic Yahweh who has to be God for us.Addendum
See also the responses by Irene Mary, 'Yahweh and the God of Christian Theology', Theology 84 (1981), pp. 42-43, and by Francis Landy, 'The Name of God and the Image of God and Man: A Response to David Clines', Theology 84 (1981), pp. 164-70.